"Look," responded Burton Willoughby, your department's legal counsel, "if we can't create some statewide consistency, how can we pretend that our programs are coherent? Why even bother to have a department?"
You knew this meeting could become contentious, but you hadn't quite expected this kind of bureaucratic sniping. Consequently, you decided to end the discussion quickly--before someone launched a nuclear attack: "We're getting nowhere. We'll reconvene again next week. But before you come to the meeting, please go easy on the caffeine."
And with that, you simply walked out of the room, hoping that your abrupt exit would persuade your team--or had they deteriorated into feuding fiefdoms?--to take a more dispassionate and analytical approach next week.
You've worked in both the private and public sectors. You've learned that any organization with a field structure is constantly tested by the tension between the centralizers in headquarters and the decentralizers in the field. The West Dakota Department of Labor Security is no different.
The people who work in the Zenith City headquarters see the world from their statewide perspective. And they want to be sure that the field staffers in Nadir Valley are applying the same standards and making the some kinds of decisions as their counterparts in Evansville and Carlton. They worry that if someone discovered conflicting interpretations of policy, the department would be faced with lawsuits, legislative hearings and hordes of inspectors general and investigative journalists. Their worry, you well recognize, is altogether legitimate.
The people who work in the field, however, see the world differently. They don't worry about abstract policy. They focus on individual cases--on individual people. And they want to treat each person not just according to the letter of the law but also according to the particulars of the situation. Their perspective, you also recognize, is absolutely necessary.
Moreover, the field staff considers the statewide regulations a pain. For some cases, they can find two or more regulations that appear to apply but that provide contradictory guidance. In other situations, no regulation has been written for the specific circumstances. Sometimes a staffer in the field will call Zenith City for an interpretation, but often this may not solve the problem, for the answer received depends upon who was called. New field staff quickly learn not to bother headquarters for interpretations of the rules.
In the two years since you became secretary of labor security, you have attempted to delegate more responsibility to your local-office directors while providing them with more guidance for particularly difficult or common cases. You have sought both more local accountability and more statewide consistency. You have gotten neither.
For a while, the tension was below the surface. Then along came the case of Bernie Lee. Lee was working at the Cleveland Copper Mine outside Evansville when he was hit by an ore trolley, breaking his leg. Obviously Lee was entitled to workers' compensation, but he filed for permanent disability. Lynn Rice didn't think Lee was permanently disabled. She sought to get Lee back to work as soon as his leg had healed. But the leg didn't heal perfectly, so Lee walked with a slight limp, which, he claimed, meant he was completely disabled. Rice and her staff thought otherwise. So Rice worked with a physical therapist and Cleveland Copper to get Lee into a desk job. To Rice, this was a significant accomplishment.
When Willoughby found out, he went berserk. The last time he had testified before the West Dakota Senate, he had received clear instructions about his obligations to the state's injured workers. And he didn't relish a return visit. Consequently, Willoughby had clarified regulations, written memos, and at meetings of the local- office directors, delivered explicit instructions.
Willoughby was having some impact. The field staff appeared to be abiding by the legislature's wishes--that is, until Lynn Rice took on the case of Bernie Lee in what appeared to be a personal crusade. The rest of the local-office directors lined up with her. And they were beginning to chafe at Willoughby's flow of directives.
The inevitable tension between headquarters and the field has evolved into a strident schism. And unless you do something before next week, the meeting may end up with some hand-to-hand combat.
